This world of ours is a world to be enjoyed, but it can not be enjoyed if we fear every manifestation of Nature and if we put a cruel god behind every cloud.
Let us live without fear, without superstition, without religion.
There is nothing above, beneath or around you that cares whether you are a Christian or an unbeliever. The real reason why a priest hates an unbeliever is that he can not get a dollar out of him. He damns those who know better than to swallow his say-sos. But it still remains a fact that an infidel can raise as many bushels of potatoes to the acre as can the Roman Catholic. The sun will not wrong an honest man. The stars will not punish a single human being for telling the truth. The sky will not persecute a person who gives his thoughts, his talents, his time, to finding ways to help mankind.
Everything that man believes in that can not be found, that can not be proved, that can not stand the test of commonsense: everything that contradicts Nature, that is opposed to established facts, that is contrary to the laws of the universe, must be given up.
We must have a new man: the man born of woman, not the man made by God; the man who has been growing better ever since his advent on earth, not the man who has been growing worse; the man who started with nothing and has conquered the earth, the sea and the air; not the man who began perfect and has not got halfway back; the man who made the telescope, the steam-engine, the power-loom, the telephone and the wireless telegraph; not the man who made the thumbscrew, the rack, the ducking-stool and the stocks; the man who has carried the torch of liberty to enlighten the world, not the man who has carried the crucifix to enslave mankind.
It is quite common to be told what Moses said or what Jesus said. Now, if all that these two Hebrew gentlemen (who in my opinion never lived) said, is preserved in the Bible, I appeal from what they said to those who know more. I assert that Moses said a lot of stuff that isn't so, and a lot more that never was so, and that all that Jesus is said to have said is practically worthless to the world today; that there is not in all of his utterances a single word that will help man to get a living, a single word that will aid man in his struggle for knowledge; that there is not a statement of a single scientific fact, or a plea for human liberty in all his language. He told his generation nothing that was not already known, except a mess of superstitious nonsense about angels and devils, heavens and hells. His so-called gospel of salvation was to follow him, and he landed on a cross.
The truth is this: the world has outgrown Moses and Jesus. It does not take commands from either. This age believes in work, not worship; in deeds, not prayers; in men, not monks; in liberty, not in pious obedience; in human rights, not in submission; in knowledge, not in revelation.
For hundreds of years man was bound by a religious faith, and the priest was his cruel master. He dared not doubt; he dared not rebel; he dared not dream of freedom; but there came a time when religious tyranny could no longer be borne. Then Mankind cried out to the Church: Give back man's brain to man; restore to him the mind you have robbed him of; take from his head and heart the paralyzing fear that makes him a coward and a slave, and leave to him the liberty with which Nature dowered him, that his mind may discover and preserve those mighty thoughts which make man brave, honest, free and happy.